ame early next morning in the person of Martin himself, who, running
into our sitting-room like a breath of wind from the sea, said his
fellow officers were separating that day, each going to his own home,
and their commander had invited me to lunch with them on their ship,
which was lying off Tilbury.

It did not escape me that my husband looked relieved at this news, and
that Alma's face brightened as she said in her most succulent tones:

"I should go if I were you, Mary. The breeze on the river will do you a
world of good, dear."

I was nothing loath to take them at their word, so I let them go off in
their four-in-hand coach, a big and bustling party, while with a
fast-beating heart I made ready to spend the day with Martin, having, as
I thought, so much and such serious things to say to him.

A steam launch from the ship was waiting for us at the Westminster
Pier, and from the moment I stepped into it I felt like another woman.
It was a radiant day in May, when the climate of our much-maligned
London is the brightest and best, and the biggest city in the world is
also the most beautiful.

How I loved it that day! The sunlight, the moving river, the soft air of
early summer, the passing panorama of buildings, old and new--what a joy
it was to me I sat on a side seat, dipping my hand over the gunwale into
the cool water, while Martin, with a rush of racy words, was pointing
out and naming everything.

St. Paul's was soon past, with the sun glistening off the golden cross
on its dome; then London Bridge; then the Tower, with its Traitors'
Gate; then the new Thames Bridge; and then we were in the region of the
barges and wharfs and warehouses, with their colliers and coasting
traders, and with the scum of coal and refuse floating on the surface of
the stream.

After that came uglier things still, which we did not mind, and then the
great docks with the hammering of rivets and the cranking noise of the
lightermen's donkey engines, loading and unloading the big steamers and
sailing ships; and then the broad reaches of the river where the great
liners, looking so high as we steamed under them, lay at anchor to their
rusty cable-chains, with their port-holes gleaming in the sun like rows
of eyes, as Martin said, in the bodies of gigantic fish.

At last we came out in a fresh breadth of water, with marshes on either
side and a far view of the sea, and there, heaving a little to the
flowing tide, and with a sea-gul